I - Prologue
Too many sleepless nights.
Too many nights spent in vane trying to solve that unexpected enigma.
Breaking the rigid silence that was embracing his home, he tiredly rolled himself in the bed, facing the light on the cabinet: 2:10.
He blinked a couple of times, hoping he saw something wrong.
Still 2:10.
He spitted out some insults in Spanish, language acquired from far and ancient relatives, while he nervously rolls again in the bed and pushed his back on the mattress.
History was repeating again, like a bad scene from a B-movie.
He passed his hand on the face, rubbing his eyes to release the eyelids tension, and he stood up.
"There was nothing I could do anyway", he thought, taking the first t-shirt he found. He walked to the kitchen, enlightened by the moon adamant reflex.
In the middle of the hallway, his steps leaded him in front of the window. He moved the curtains aside and pull his face close to the glass, and the gaze started to run toward the dark and silent horizon.
- I must be the only one awake in six blocks. - he whispered smiling, while a sorrowful sigh flew out from his lips.
In the past few weeks, two by now, it had been happening more and more frequently: waking up when the alarm clock showed just a few minutes after midnight, and falling back to sleep only at sunrise.
And that night was not an exception.
He reached the kitchen table and refuges back to its ritual, which he would rather interrupt, by the way: a cup of warm milk where to drown all the lost sleeping hours.
While he held the cup in his hand, he glanced at the fridge like a magnet, and did the only thing he could do in the middle of the night: think.
He couldn't realize it at the beginning.
He was naïve, maybe too much for a guy like him, the first times he found himself looking at the digital numbers flowing; he didn't care so much about it, he thought it was a coincidence, maybe one of the many sleeping upsets the psychics talk so much about.
He found out there was something tormenting him, only the night he went out for a walk, alone in the wood listening to the voice of his own conscience.
From that point on, each minute he was awake, it was a new piece of the puzzle finding its place.
It was like standing against a dark presence, with no name or face, who hided inside him to orchestrate in the darkness.
A missing details from the bigger picture.
A thought. Just one, powerful, that was grown, and he didn't even notice how or when.
And just when he was finally able to see trough the haze, that profile without contours became clear. With a face and a name that, unfortunately, he knew even too well.
A truth he unconsciously decided to hide in some remote corner of his mind, a truth he couldn't ignore anymore.
He knew he had a problem. A big one. A problem he hoped he would never have to face again.
He slammed the side door of the car with all the strength that was left in his arm, with the echo of his frustration resounding trough the trees.
He leaned on to reflect himself in the rear-view mirror: red eyes, deep dark circles around them, and a not so lucid look.
Nothing different from yesterday.
"You're a mess, Beck", he thought. He passed a hand trough his hair, trying to shake off another sleepless night. Maybe his famous hair was the only thing that was still standing in him.
He leaned the hand to the key but, when it came the moment to start the car, an hesitation made him stop at mid air.
Another day to spent carrying that burden. It didn't matter how much he tried to placate it or making it less incessant, he could never leave it at home. It would have seat beside him and it would have followed him all the day, just like the past two weeks.
He turned the key with a rude gesture that almost broke it, and hit the gas to Hollywood Arts, while the engine roaring covered his hears and the voices in his head.
The burning sun that was flaming Los Angeles roads was becoming every morning more annoying.
Maybe because his tired eyed could filter it right, or maybe because, instinctively, it was representing a signal even too peaceful for his bad mood.
He was driving with the hands distractively placed on the wheel of his beautiful yellow Pontiac GTO, keeping the gaze on the street, and not caring about what was surrounding him.
Only when he was overtaken by an old ice-cream truck, and received a hoot from the car following him, Beck realized he was going really slow. And yet, he was not surprised by that.
He perfectly knew what was holding him.
It was the oppressive weight of the thoughts that violently rushed throughout his mind. It was that claw on the stomach that, morning after morning, was eating a bit of his confidence, and that had lead him to be afraid of staring a new day at school.
Being afraid for what it could have happened.
For him. For her.
He could never imagine he could feel something like this. And maybe, now he had enough.
He tied the grab on the wheel and pushed the gas pedal, outrunning the car behind him and almost flying by the ice-cream truck.
The yellow GTO, recognizable by everyone, by girls in particular, arrived skidding at the Hollwood Arts parking lot, leaving a well visible contrail on the concrete.
Beck glanced at the watch: he still had a few minutes before that weird ring bell would force him to enter.
He was just about to check inside his backpack, when her vision, a few meters from the car, captured his attention.
Without have noticed his presence, Jade and Cat were heading to the front door steps; the dark girl was laughing out her stomach, while her friend with red fire hair was frowning and had her arms crossed.
His mouth moved into a grind: he wouldn't be surprised if Jade made some bad joke about her or her brother.
But looking at his girlfriend under that light, so apparently happy, he felt the claw loosing of a few centimetres.
At least, there weren't any traces of the fight they had last night left in her.
He waited, without taking his eyes off her, until she disappeared behind the glass doors. Then he stepped out the car and headed to the institute.
Easy is boring, he said once upon a time.
But now, only he knows how much he wanted things to be that easy.
He always thought she was the part he was missing, and that he found to complete himself.
But what if she was the card that would make him bust and break the deck?